Monday, May 17, 2004

The Khalifa and JFK.

What happened this morning was not a surprise. We (Iraqis and coalition) learned from our experiences in the past months that the road towards a free, prosperous and stable Iraq, in which the sovereignty hand-over in June 30 is the key step, will not be an easy one to go through.

I’ve searched the media today, looking for details, analyses and reactions about this crime and again, they didn’t miss the chance to blame America for the deteriorated security situation, stressing that the CPA’s grave mistake was sending Saddam’s army and security systems’ personnel home. Here, we find a great deal of contradiction, because the same experts who appear on the media criticizing the US for that decision, accuse the same security and intelligence personnel of committing today’s and other terrorist attacks in Iraq. I can’t imagine how those people could expect the criminals to protect the law.

I’ve been listening to some perspectives about this incident and in many instances, I found these perspectives echoic of the terrorists' words, especially when someone says “see, the GC and the Iraqis cannot even protect their highest officials. How can we expect them to be able to protect the lives of ordinary Iraqis and manage the affairs of a whole country next July?”
This is a direct call for delaying the political process in this country. And who’s interested in doing so?!
I guess this has become obvious for us a long time ago.

We have a critical security situation, that’s right and we need to deal with the defects quickly. But no matter what precautions we take, we cannot be a 100% sure that we can protect every single person, including our leaders and the higher officials who make favorite targets for the terrorists but we still can make their attempts go in vain by making our leadership *replaceable*. This idea may seem odd or even a little bit cruel but I can give some further explanations; the terrorists think in the same way their dictator-masters do. They believe that every nation has “and should have” one strong man to lead her and if it happened one day that the nation “lost” this strong man (the Khalifa, in OBL's followers' minds), she will certainly be doomed. The main point that they fail to capture, is that this idea applies only to totalitarian regimes and does not apply to democracies. This doesn't mean, at all, that we don't respect our leaders or that we do not appreciate their services. We can take a good example from the history of the USA; when president JFK was assassinated (America was one of the two super powers in the world at that time), the Americans were deeply saddened by the loss of such a great leader but they did not stop at that point. They moved on and kept their determination to overcome the loss and that’s why America became the only super power in the world in less than 30 years from that tragic incident. That's why we'll keep moving forwards because we're building a model for democracy here, we've sacrificed a lot in the last decades and we're ready to give more if needed but we're not giving up.

Are we sad? Yes of course, but we’re absolutely not discouraged because we know our enemies and we know their ways and we decided to go in this battle to the end. They think they can force us to give up but they’re totally mistaken. I’ve tasted freedom, my friends and I’d rather die fighting to preserve my freedom before I find myself trapped in another nightmare of blood and oppression.